[decimon]

Caption: The "bearded" setae on the antennae, bright red highlights and aquamarine tail fins add to the distinctiveness of the new species, Barbicambarus simmonsi.

Credit: Photo courtesy of Carl Williams

Usage Restrictions: Photo may be used only with stories about the research described in the news release. Please credit: Photo courtesy of Carl Williams

Caption: The new species, Barbicambarus simmonsi (left) is more than twice the size of a typical crayfish found in Shoal Creek (which drains into the Tennessee River) -- and yet generations of aquatic biologists who frequented the area somehow missed it.

Credit: L. Brian Stauffer

Usage Restrictions: Photo may be used only with stories about the research described in the news release. Please credit: L. Brian Stauffer.

[Thermalseeker]

Somebody get a pot of water boiling. I’ll bring the seasoning!

[EggsAckley]

Yummy.

[pgkdan]

What does it taste like? That’s the real question...

[rahbert]

Wonder what they taste like in a gumbo?

[centurion316]

Helluva mud bug there. I bet that it eats real good, especially with some Jax beer.

[Uncle Miltie]

Correction: "The new crayfish belongs to the genus Barbicambarus Barbicueus Excellentium"

[April Lexington]

Mmmmmm..... steamed. With drawn butter!

[Himyar]

Heaven only knows what is out there right under our noses. I live in Alabama and nothing would surprise me. Three years ago my Great Dane snatched a critter out of a tree and killed it. It was some sort of weasel about three feet long without the tail. Probably weighed 40 pounds. The dogs ran off with it so I couldn’t take it any where to get it identified. I called the wildlife people and they told me there was nothing in Alabama like that. I looked it up on line and think it was a marten of some kind. Only they live way up north. Well, they have Dixie relatives.

[JoeProBono]

:

[frithguild]

Alabama and Tennessee are hotspots of crayfish diversity, he said.

As all construction near these waterways comes screeching yo a halt...

[Portcall24]

One is enough for a big dish of Etouffee.

[goseminoles]

I thought Florida “lobsters” were actually “bugs”. They are much bigger than these..

[Snickering Hound]

The only reason I can think of why it hadn’t been “discovered” yet is to avoid it being declared an endangered species by the Feds.

[vetvetdoug]

Damn!! Those things are twenty miles from here. I stay on the Tennessee River at Pickwick and never seen one that big.

[Southron Patriot]

I live in Decatur, Alabama and we have been eating them for years. My Grandfather told me that a old Cherokee Indian with whom he hung around with as a boy learning how to make a Bow and Arrows etc. told him that the giant crayfish were great to eat and that his people had been trapping them for a long, long time.

I have personally seen them get nearly 12”. They are very fast and you have to have a trap/net to catch them. There very good boiled.

This may be a secret to the Scientist but not to those who grew up around the Tenn. River here in Alabama!

[paulycy]

[Ole Okie]

Hey, that’s a big old crawdad!!

[Hotmetal]

Doing it right in Oak Ridge, LA.